Page 150 of Rule of Wolves

“You spoke Fjerdan and he came back to himself,” Mayu said to Bergin. “How did you do it?”

“I didn’t know I could,” he admitted. “The work of conversion is grueling. It was painful for both of us.”

Reyem’s big shoulders shrugged. “I hated you, just as I hated the doctors and the guards. Until I saw that you were suffering too.”

Bergin rested his head against the metal frame of the bunk. “Most times, there was just the pain and the work. They made me…” He hung his head. “I’m sorry, Reyem.”

A silence fell, weighted with the horrors Bergin and her brother had seen.

Mayu touched her good hand to her twin’s, and he took it gently in his. Tamar and Bergin had done what they could for her other hand, and the pain had receded to a low throb.

Quietly, she said, “You told the queen you died a thousand times.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “To have your heart stopped in your chest, your flesh torn from your bones, to fall into oblivion, then wake to nightmare again and again and again. All for the sake of being reborn as a weapon.”

“I started teaching him Fjerdan,” said Bergin. “To distract him from the pain. Swear words, mostly.”

“What did you say to get him to wake up?” asked Tamar.

Bergin grinned. “You don’t want to know. It was incredibly filthy.”

Ehri entered the lab. Her face had been washed clean, but she was still covered in sludge. “We can’t stay here any longer. It will be dawn soon. There’s a small summer palace between here and the city. Queen Leyti commands that we travel there. We can eat, bathe, change our clothes, and figure out what we’re going to do.”

Bergin struck his fist against the bunk. “There will be no punishment for Makhi, for any of them. Just watch.”

“Why not?” Mayu asked. She felt naive asking, like a child trying to keep pace with her brother once more.

“Because they’re all Taban,” said Reyem. “A mark against one is a mark against all of them.”

“Not Ehri,” said Mayu. “The people love her. And they know she would never do anything like this. There will be justice.”

She looked to the princess, but all Ehri did was gesture to the door. “Come. There will be time to talk when we’ve eaten and rested.”

It took a while to sort out the laboratory. Tamar brought the doctor back to consciousness and he, in turn, woke the other khergud as Queen Leyti and Ehri looked on. There were four including Reyem, but none of the others remembered their true names. They asked no questions, made no requests. They simply stood—some with wings, some with horns, some with claws—waiting for orders. Perfect soldiers. Had they been further along in their transformation than Reyem? Or had none of them had a Bergin, someone to remind them that they were more than pain and anger?

Mayu watched as they locked up the laboratory, and Bergin and Reyem took their last look at this nightmare place. It was evidence and would be left intact for now.

But I’ll come back, she promised herself. She might never banish the emptiness from her brother’s eyes, but she would pull this place apart piece by piece if she had to. She would watch it burn to the ground.

The journey to the summer palace didn’t take long. It was located in a green dell beside its own gleaming lake, a getaway for members of the royal family or important guests of the crown in the hot months.

Mayu sat with her brother and Bergin in one of the garden rooms, the windows framing the sun slowly rising over the lake. The other Grisha and the khergud had been placed in separate, heavily guarded chambers, but Bergin had been allowed to remain with Reyem.

“What happens now?” he asked. “I can’t return to Fjerda.”

Mayu didn’t know. She hadn’t thought past finding Reyem and freeing him. “We could go home,” she suggested. “Mother and Fath—”

“No,” Reyem said harshly. “I never want them to see me like this.”

“They think you’re dead.”

“Good. Let them mourn me.”

“Reyem,” pleaded Mayu. She needed to know they could take some part of their lives back. “They love you. More than anything. More than me. More than life. They’ll love you this way as they loved you before.”

“But I don’t know that I can love them back.”

Mayu looked away. She couldn’t bear to think of her sweet, laughing, generous brother, and know that he was gone.